


a good place to hide in plain sight

by arbitrarily



Category: Generation Kill
Genre: Canon-Typical Content, Episode: s01e06 Stay Frosty, M/M, Missing Scene, Mutual Commiseration, Mutual Masturbation, Rare Male Slash Exchange Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-01
Updated: 2020-08-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:53:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24981871
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arbitrarily/pseuds/arbitrarily
Summary: Sometimes Tim resents the decent and the capable officers even more than he does the rest of these assholes.
Relationships: Timothy Bryan/Nate Fick
Comments: 6
Kudos: 36
Collections: Rare Male Slash Exchange 2020





	a good place to hide in plain sight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [linguamortua](https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/gifts).



> Title from Phoebe Bridgers's "Punisher."

There’s almost something biblical about it, wandering the fucking desert and wanting. Poke would most like have some long-winded shit to say about that if Tim ever bothered to give voice to it, but he’s never gonna do that. You keep that shit to yourself. Now, he stifles a yawn. He sets down his SAW, in easy reach should the situation deescalate and they’re called into action. The rate this tire fire’s been burning, he wouldn’t put it past Schwetje to shove them back out into the dark at some demented, shit-for-brains, group-think-imagined provocation. Nothing good's waiting down that train of thought, but goddamn if Tim hasn’t got a whole list of shit he wants. He gives in to that yawn; a couple hours of uninterrupted shut-eye currently ranks somewhere near the top of the list. The others he’s willing to acknowledge include, at the least: command sans head-in-ass disease; an actionable and effective—fuck, he’d settle for humane—SOP regarding the civilian populace; and, well.

There’s the one he won’t, even to himself.

He barely glances up as Nate advances. Tim clocked it before, when he returned from patrol—everything about it senseless and unnecessary, the tank already fucking blown out. He came back to more puke, more bullshit, the same futility the rest of this invasion’s had, why start expecting anything different. He knows why, and it’s standing right in front of him. Lieutenant Fick. Sometimes Tim resents the decent and the capable officers even more than he does the rest of these assholes. That's more desert shit right there: a mirage. A glimpse of better times you’re never gonna get.

But when he got back, he caught Nate’s eye before he brushed past him. He was tired and worn-looking, like he’d actually been through a war, the kind paired with a nostalgic sepia-toned Ken Burns documentary boxset and surviving geriatrics who managed to say shit about courage without any boot-fucked irony. Not whatever this clusterfuck’s been. It’s not only Nate though; the way the whole company’s wound tight you’d have thought they’d been out here far longer than they’ve been. Forty days and fucking nights, he thinks with an inward smirk, only for himself. Or maybe not. He’s looking at Nate now as he comes closer and Nate’s mouth flickers briefly, as if in response.

“You lost, LT?” He grunts it, his usual protocol: dismissive instead of inviting.

Tim’s managed to achieve a modicum of privacy for himself, tucked away from the retching and the bitching, shrouded in the hulking shadow of humvee and cammie net. It’s unclear if Nate came out here looking for his own square footage of sand and quiet or if he was looking for him. The lack of surprise on Nate’s face tells him it’s the latter. That’s got him more than a little curious.

Nate takes his time to reply. This close, Tim can see Nate’s eyes are red-rimmed from the wind and sand. Most common casualty Tim’s treated, other than the runs. Nate takes his helmet off. He rubs at the top of his head, against his buzzed hair. He offers Tim a terse shake of his head, his jaw tight. “Nope.” Nate stands up a little straighter, squared off. Any other man, it might’ve come across as performative, some hoo-rah Encino Man semper fucked bullshit. With Nate, it’s just him. “How’re the men?”

Tim bites down on a sarcastic laugh, barely. It comes out as a huff of breath through his nose. Leave it to Nate to be more concerned about the status of his men and their bowels than his own ever-diminishing standing with battalion. Because, yeah, Tim’s got the score.

He’d heard what Nate said to Greigo—not directly, but then these boys trade in more hearsay and gossip than a suburban book club. He got it first from Chaffin and then from Reyes. The telling differed, but not the gist of it. Tim himself had walked into the tail end of it and he more than kinda wishes he could’ve witnessed the whole thing. There’s still something so goddamn delicate about Nate Fick that when that steel goes unsheathed, unfairly or not, it still comes as a surprise.

“They’ll live,” Tim says, tired enough to let both bark and bite cut through his tone. Even learning the mission order was nothing more than the result of sleep-deprived fuckery (again, per both Chaffin and Reyes), it didn’t do a fucking thing to curb his anger. Fuck it; he’s angry all the time. The problem with Iraq, and there are plenty, is that there are too many places and too many people for him to put that anger. All that unspent aggression—he’s run out of room inside himself to keep it his own.

And he can see it. He has seen it. Nate’s got that anger in him, too. He might wear it better than he does, but he’s not blind: the cracks are starting to show.

Maybe that’s why Tim keeps talking. “I don’t think you need me to tell you that the stupidity of this company’s command vaulted straight over the line into criminal fucking negligence before we even left Kuwait, sir, but the line’s so far behind us now, I can’t even fucking see it.”

“No, but it sounds like you just told me anyway.” Nate sets his mouth like he's grinding his teeth. "The incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary." He glances away, out to a dark horizon, indistinguishable from the rest of the desert spread around them. Tim watches the lift and the subsequent fall, the slump of his shoulders as he breathes in deeply. “Nothing’s—none of it’s what I,” he starts. His voice is desperately, inappropriately, sad—confessional even, but he just as quickly stops. Officers, keeping personal opinions to themselves. Tim knows the drill. Nate shakes his head, as if settling a private argument with himself, before he turns back to Tim. His head is still ducked until he pulls his posture back up straight.

Nate’s a fucking kid—that was what Tim had first thought when he first saw him. Nothing more than a kid, bitten off more than he can chew let alone swallow. It wasn’t true—a fucking Ivy League college grad, in his mid-twenties—but he still looked every bit the altar boy-next-door. It’s hard to reconcile that first impression with the Nate in front of him now. Disappointment and something uglier are trying to break through that flat anger hugging his face like a mask. Cynicism doesn’t always have to be so hard-earned, but Tim knows, just by looking at him. Nate’s been thrown into the crucible. He’s burning right now. Nate’s figuring it out, little by little, how the world really works. Not a bit fair or good about it.

“Yeah, well.” It’s all Tim says, but Nate’s looking at him like he gets it. Maybe it’s not a private argument Nate’s having with himself so much as a private conversation with Tim.

“None of you should’ve had to go out there tonight.” He’s reined himself back in, returned to that all too familiar clipped and authoritative tone.

“Whole lot of fucking good that does us now. Sir.” He throws the address out like a hand grenade, uncaring if he’s clear when it goes off.

Nate doesn’t so much as blink. “You shouldn’t have been put in that position.” His face is grim as fuck, serious, meaning every word. And, see, that’s the fucking problem with officers like him. You trust him, you can trust him, but you can also trust he’ll still have no choice but to do as he’s told and let that shit boulder from up on high roll downhill straight towards them.

“The way of the Corps, isn’t it? We’re all put in the wrong fucking position, and more often than not that’s bent the fuck over.”

“You won’t be. Put in that position again.”

Tim breathes in harshly, and he lets himself laugh this time. Easier to engage with it at a glance, rather than straight-on. There’s no room for that earnestness, not here. “So what you’re telling me is you won’t be bending me over? And here I was thinking that might be the first thing done to me worth a damn since I joined up.”

Nate's mouth twitches. It only throws fuel on Nate’s already burning fire, just as Tim thought it might. He’s still so regimented, so put-together. It only really shows in the sudden flare of his nostrils, the way his eyes widen rather than narrow. If it was brighter, if the light was better, Tim thinks he’d be able to see a pink flush rise up and color his cheeks. Tim doesn’t want to think about it, how well he’s learned Nate, his face, how he can read it now, fluent in his micro-expressions and each minor shift in his mood like a fucking weather vane, but, well, here he fucking is.

He wonders if Nate’s playing with the same concept of displaced anger. Like maybe he’s run out of room inside himself for it, too. Containment overrun. Because Nate is coiled tight and he looks angry enough, like he might finally do something stupid. Reckless. His mouth is clenched, his lips thin, and there’s the fluttering flex of muscle at his jaw. There’s that look in his eye that Tim unfortunately knows well—if left unchecked, it’s something that can break a man. You have two options with that kind of shit: you either let it, or you burrow through it. Try to come out the other side.

Tim can feel his own recklessness baiting him. Everything that happens out here feels consequential in a way that makes him sick. No—fuck that. How’s about adopting a little goddamn self-responsibility and respect. Everything _he_ does, every action he takes and every single thing he makes happen—you can’t take any of it back. He’s gonna have to live it all down. He’ll have to defend it, to himself at the very least. A fucking war crimes tribunal, he likes to imagine, often, with the same lust that’d be better spent on actual combat jack material, though still, nothing less than they probably deserve. This feels a lot like that. Him and Nate, the night full-dark, shared only between them, unwritten in any official history or sit-rep. But it’s something, if he lets it happen, and then it'll be something he’ll have to defend to himself.

Maybe if they were some other place and they were different people they would actually talk about it. Tim would say, _go on, just say it_ , or maybe he’d do one better and ask, _are you alright?_ , and Nate would answer honestly, give voice to the truth written tired and worn across his dirty face. And then what? Tim knows himself—get an answer, and he’d still feel compelled to do something about it. It’s what he does, he fixes people, even if only for a little while. Even if there's too much there to fix. 

Marines make do—it’s as much a credo as a common refrain in response to routine bitching as their own ROE. What does that bring him now? Skip the middle man. Fuck him. No questions. No more conversation. Just do something about it.

Tim can blame that, and he can also shift the blame to a whole host of shit for what he does next—fatigue, both physical and mental; the same sleep-deprived insanity Person’s suffered, and by extension made every man within range suffer, from the first rolling klick of this invasion; Tim’s bad temper finally manifesting in physical action, demanding to seek the reflection it’s spied in Nate. Or, head-on, full responsibility: he’s going to take the thing he wants he can’t even admit to wanting.

He closes the minor distance between them and he presses his mouth to Nate's. It’s technically a kiss, even if both of their mouths are closed, resolute, teeth packed hard against lip, to feel fair to call it that. Absent any tenderness, it might as well be the opening salvo for a fistfight. Tim’s breathing harder than he has any right to when he pulls back from him. He wants to face the consequences for something he can’t take back. His mind is almost manic with the thought—NJP’d at best, court martialed, for planting the chastest kiss in recent adult memory on a superior officer in the cold dead of night. On Nate.

Nate pulls back further from him. Tim tries to feel anger rather than embarrassment, or, worse still, shame. Panic. There’s something broken, something programmed wrong in him, where anger is always the first emotion he reaches for. He grits his teeth and he waits for Nate to do something about it.

He takes his flak vest off. He lets it drop, along with his helmet. Nate does it with the same deliberate self-possession as he would issue an order. That’s sort of what this is like then: he’s making it clear what he wants. What comes next. Tim takes a steadying breath in. He wants to think of it as an animal rolling over to bare its stomach, its throat, revealing where the blood beats fast, at the surface and for the taking, but he’s pretty sure that’s not what this is. Challenge, over submission. _I’m putting it down_ , Chaffin said Nate had said to Gunny. _You picking it up?_

Tim is.

He meets him when Nate leans back in to kiss him.

He’s got a good mouth for it, soft and giving. Wet. It feels like some kind of nameless violation to get a taste of him like this—salt and sweat and spit—but Tim doesn’t stop. He doesn’t let up. He opens under Nate’s mouth, aching as Nate delves in, tongue hot against his. He can’t help the groan Nate takes from him, swallowed into his own mouth. It’s been a fucking long time; too long. The faint stubble of Nate’s face is rough against Tim’s more flagrant disregard for the grooming standard. He pictures Nate’s face scrubbed raw from his own, reddened and obvious, and he surges bodily against him.

Tim can feel the press of Nate’s fingers against the back of his head, through the dirty fabric of the bandana. Rough, his grip harsh, but his hand is wide and it feels like he is cradling his skull. Nate’s SAW is still hanging off his shoulder, unnoticed, as if a natural extension of his body. It swings against the both of them with any sudden movement; they both ignore it.

Tim resists the urge to follow Nate when he pulls back from him, his eyes glassy and wild. “Fuck, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. We—can’t. This—isn’t.” Both his protest and speech are halting and aborted, almost comical as he betrays himself and his good intentions with a seemingly accidental roll of his hips into Tim’s. They’re still close enough that Tim can feel each hot breath against his face, panting. His mouth feels used and bruised, wet lips buzzing from the memory of teeth. Nate licks his own lips and looks down at Tim’s mouth, and it’s so fucking dumb. So fucking unfair to want something, anything, this bad, to have it right here in from of you, and know you’re still not gonna take it. Nate’s a better man than he is; Tim doesn’t think he would’ve stopped.

Tim lifts his eyes from Nate’s mouth. “Then we won’t.”

They’re still pressed to each other, Nate’s interest poking faintly against his hip. They’re both rank with the time and the toll out here, but there’s a bizarre intimacy to be found in knowing what Nate’s unwashed skin smells like. Tastes like. He’s close enough he could easily start kissing him again. He doesn’t. Instead, Tim reaches down. He circles Nate’s wrist tightly and he drags his hand into the tight trapped heat between their bodies. “Take care of it yourself,” he says. A glint sharpens in Nate’s eye as he meets his. Tim can feel the flex of his tendons at his wrist as he slowly moves his hand toward the intended target, less caution and more as if he's stringing the both of them along. A fucking tease; he feels like he somehow already knew that about him, that it matches with what he refused to imagine about him.

“Nothing I haven’t done to myself a thousand times over.” The humor is warm in his tone same as his skin under Tim’s fingers. Tim lets go of his wrist, barely resists the urge to palm himself through his MOPP.

“Fucking do it then,” Tim says, and Nate does. Obedience and discipline drilled into these boys even when they manage to do something that should count as rebellion against it.

Privacy isn’t real, not out here and not with this many men. They’ve achieved an illusion of it, tenuous and easily broken. Tim doesn’t want to invest more into this than he already has, but as he mimics Nate—first spitting into his own hand then reaching into his MOPP—it feels a lot like relief. That won’t last either. Self-sabotaging motherfucker, he thinks he might actually prefer the anger. He knows he can trust that.

He meets Nate’s eye again. Nate sucks in an uneven breath. No. He can trust him, too.

The night is dark, their clothes are still on, there’s nothing to see, except for everything. Nate’s hand rustles in his MOPP, his elbow jarring into Tim’s side as he moves. After some fumbling, a nearly nervous hitch of his entire body first away and then into Tim, he sets a punishing pace. His hand moves fast, miserably so. Tim doesn’t follow suit. He takes his time. He abandons his usual approach—clinical, brisk and business-like. Instead he moves slow as he curls his fingers around his own cock, as he teases himself out. Like this, it feels as if a different hand than his own is touching him. Like it could be Nate’s hand, the slowness, the near reverence, nothing that could be Tim’s own. The sensation’s only heightened with Nate’s eyes trained on him, his lashes flickering as they open and close. His mouth is parted open too, his breath quick and noisy. Tim’s seen Nate’s dick before; he bets it’s chubbed up real nice in his hand now, red as his swollen mouth, just as wet. It makes a sound deep, needy and nearly satisfied, catch behind Tim’s teeth. He squeezes tighter, down at the base. He licks at his own mouth and he can still taste the inside of Nate’s. Hunger feels like this raw, inescapable thing sprung up between them, but, fuck, maybe it was always there. Maybe they’re just finally touching it now, like an electric fence—shocked and singed and itching under their skin.

Nate comes quickly and silently, a violent shiver racing through him and into Tim as his body shakes against him. Tim slows his own hand, wanting to watch, to take this in. Nate’s mouth is slack, his eyes closed and then open, still tired, but eager, alert and alive in a way they weren’t when he first approached.

Nate pulls his hand out of his MOPP. Without thinking anything beyond the word _want_ , Tim grabs him by the wrist again. He pulls Nate’s hand to him. He licks it clean. Tim groans thickly; it’s disgusting—not his come, but the rest. He can taste the dirt, the grime, caked into his skin. Unclean hands, rare for an officer. Tim sucks on his fingers, his mouth open and wet against the wide palm of his hand, open to the taste. At the first touch of his mouth on him, Nate’s hips flex like he’s still coming. Tim can picture it—his dick still hard, spurting into his MOPP. With the taste of him full on his tongue it’s easy enough to imagine his dick in his mouth, twitching and animal hot as he pushes deeper, comes down his throat. Tim speeds his own hand up, multitasking finally good for something out here.

“Go on, that’s it,” Nate says, like Tim needs the encouragement. They must teach that at OCS—encourage the men in any task. But it’s both an officer’s voice and entirely Nate’s, breathy and spent, willing to go further. "Go on, fuck," he's still saying and something hot flutters deep in his gut. Maybe Tim does need that encouragement. Maybe he wants it. His fingertips dig viciously into the bone of Nate’s wrist and his teeth snag against his palm.

He gives himself over to all the thoughts he usually doesn’t allow himself to have. He lets himself imagine each and every thing, from the debauched to the painfully sincere, he wants to do to Nate. He lets himself imagine more. Things that could never belong here, bound by the forgiveness found any other place—an impossibility, seeing as they only belong to each other here. But he wants to imagine kinder, gentler. An actual bed, bodies laid out and time to devour. It doesn’t fit, not now. Not here. He moves faster all the same, more like Nate had, his knuckles rasping against the interior of his suit, cock leaking wet into his tight grip.

He’s grateful his mouth is covered. Nate’s hand muffles whatever noise Tim might’ve made when he comes. He sucks in a deep breath and the briny smell of Nate’s warm flesh fills his nose.

Tim releases Nate’s wrist, but Nate doesn’t move. His hand is still raised, like he’s both unaware and entirely too aware of it. He watches Tim as he drags his hand out of his pants, his eyes snagging on the wet glistening visible in the minimal light. Tim knows how that tactical mind works, reciprocity brightly shining somewhere in there as a guiding principle.

“Don’t you fucking dare,” Tim manages to say, wry and more than a little out of breath. Fuck, but he’d never come back from that. Couldn’t live past the image of his come anywhere near Nate’s full mouth. He wipes his hand on his thigh, his MOPP already filthy beyond redemption.

Nate’s eyes are still dark when they lift back to his face. “Rain check then.” There’s an obscene promise in it, even with Nate’s voice set to studiously casual. Something like hysterical laughter catches in Tim’s chest and he resists the urge to scrub his dirty hands over his face. Resists the urge to laugh, too. Nothing here, not even this, makes any sense. Soon the sun will rise and he’ll go out to meet the day with not only exhaustion but the surreality of getting something you wanted you could barely admit to yourself you wanted it in the first place. And then, Nate Fick’s assurance of more.

He casts a quick glance over his shoulder; they’ve already beyond pressed their luck in more ways than one, but no one else is there. They’re still alone, if only for a little while longer.

He turns back to Nate. Nate looks almost relaxed. The weight of command dropped from him same as his kevlar, the tightness of his face gone, erased and replaced by something looser, confident and more than a little indulged. Tim doesn’t want to think about why that, out of everything, is what hits him the hardest.

Tim lets his mouth crack into a small, but genuine, grin. “Copy that, LT.”

**Author's Note:**

> The line, "The incompetent leading the unwilling to do the unnecessary," is a line from the book and, per Nate, was a saying the Marines had about the military during their tour in Afghanistan.
> 
> And! I had just finished a rewatch of the series when I saw your request for these two and it instantly lit up some part of my brain I had no idea existed, so thank you very much for that! (And I also most definitely want to thank you for introducing me to the gospel that is sweaty medic romance starring Doc Bryan.)


End file.
